The End To Public Hospitals

Attached a link http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/30/v-fullstory/1994541/need-for-public-hospitals-to-be.html to an interesting article published in the Miami Herald reporting that the governor-elect's transition team has recommended creation of a panel to study whether government-owned hospitals -- Miami-Dade's Jackson Health System and Broward's two hospital districts among them -- are necessary. Rick Scott has promised to run the government like a business and government support for hospital does not fit into his ideological paradigm.
But, as the Sun Sentinel reports in an article today, " .. companies exist to make profits, while governments are charged with performing services for a wide variety of people, including the needy."
I guess Rick Scott is used to firing people and thinks that we can just "fire" 500,000 Uninsured in Miami-Dade County too. Meanwhile, the State of Florida has failed so far to deliver promised Medicaid reforms, and stands to lose $350 million in special funding from the federal government unless it can get an extension of a waiver! These funds, called the Lower Income Pool, are crucial to Jackson Memorial fiscal survival, which received $258 million from the pool last year. But Rick Scott wants to keep distance from the federal government and we can kiss this waiver good-by too. Furthermore, in his ideological world the Unemployed are also at fault for their own calamity and need to shape up or commit themselves to community services. But how can they afford healthcare if they have no access to public healthcare services, no job and no money to pay the escalating healthinsurance premiums? I see those patients every single day. Hard working, decent American citizens abandoned by their own government! Guess, Rick Scott also indulges in nostalgic reminiscence of the "good old times" before government helped to protect workers from exploitation by industrialists, abolished child labor and unions successfully struggled for fair wages.
We definitely should not let him to drag our State backwards. We must save Jackson Memorial hospital and preserve our already strained public health system.


Yours



Bernd